Say it ain’t so, Barry. Did baseball’s home run king take steroids? Could he have blasted 73 in 2001 without a little extra testosterone? Are the players getting stronger naturally, or does BALCO deserve credit for baseball’s rising power numbers?

With the evidence mounting against some of baseball’s biggest stars, many ugly questions surround the game. As the sluggers begin to resemble professional wrestlers, it is becoming increasingly clear that performance-enhancing substances have tainted the integrity of our national pastime.

So what do we do now? Slap an asterisk on all records broken in the steroids era? How will we even know when that era began?

Though his statements about Babe Ruth’s possible steroid use are absurd, Jeff Kent brings up a valid point.

“People are so pinned on the era now versus the era then,” Kent told the Associated Press. “Do we really know about then?”

Even if we can somehow pinpoint the year steroids first entered the game, how will we decide what qualifies as a steroid and what is an acceptable performance-enhancer? McGwire may have been Schwarzenegger-esque, in 1998, but andro was not a prohibited substance in Major League Baseball. Can you penalize a player who didn’t actually break the rules?

Testing players for performance enhancing substances seems like an obvious solution, but there are so many different performance-enhancers out there that the league can not possibly be expected to test for them all. MLB just found out about THG and there’s no telling how many other substances there are that Selig and company know nothing about.

So, how can major league baseball ensure that its players are clean? The honor system? That doesn’t seem to be working, as any middle-schooler could have predicted.

Is there any way to preserve the integrity of the game? Selig and the boys need to find an answer. If they are unable to eliminate performance-enhancers from the game, our national pastime may lose its credibility, its legitimacy and even its charm.

Clearly, this is a problem that affects every baseball fan. However, an even greater problem seems to have somehow fallen under the radar.

The availability of loosely regulated performance-enhancers presents a danger that transcends baseball. Dangerous substances that can lead to severe health problems are being used not only by professional athletes, but by America’s youth.

Dr. Charles Yesalis, a professor of health and human development at Penn State and a noted expert on teen steroid use, believes that at least 500,000 teens in the United States have used steroids. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy states that 6-11 percent of high school males admit to steroid use.

A study conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2002 shows that one out of every 40 high school seniors use andro and one out of 50 10th grade students use andro.

Though andro and other dangerous substances are available at your local GNC, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), states, “Scientific evidence shows that when androstenedione is taken over time and in sufficient quantities, it may increase the risk of serious and life-threatening diseases. Potential long-term consequences of these products in men include testicular atrophy, impotence, and the development of female characteristics such as breast enlargement…women who use these products may also be at increased risk for breast cancer and endometrial cancer. Children who use these products are at risk of early onset of puberty and of premature cessation of bone growth.”

Clearly, andro is not a substance that high-school students should be using. However, thanks to a ridiculous loophole that classifies many performance enhancers as “dietary supplements”, these dangerous substances avoid FDA regulations on controlled substances and prescription drugs. In fact, since a “dietary supplement” is not considered a food product or a drug, substances classified as dietary supplements are basically unregulated by the FDA.

Though HHS recently took a miniscule step toward regulating performance-enhancing substances by sending warning letters to 23 companies asking them to stop selling products that contain andro, many dangerous athletic substances remain unregulated.

The virtually unrestricted availability of performance-enhancing substances began with the passage of the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act of 1994. Prior to this act, dietary supplements were classified as food products and the FDA regulated their contents. However, according to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the provisions of the 1994 act state that “dietary ingredients used in dietary supplements are no longer subject to the premarket safety evaluations required of other new food ingredients.”

With the FDA looking the other way, the consumer’s only hope is that the friendly people at GNC will sacrifice millions of dollars in sales by refusing to sell potentially dangerous products. There’s that honor system again.

Perhaps even more troubling is the fact nearly half of America’s high school students do not perceive the dangers of using performance-enhancing supplements. According to the Monitoring the Future Study, a national study of high school seniors conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, around 71 percent of high school seniors believed people “risked harming themselves” through steroid use in 1992. In 2002, only 57 percent of high school seniors believed steroids posed such a risk.

If dangerous substances are available to high school students who do not believe these substances are dangerous, how can we stop teens from using them? This is an even more pressing question than the one that currently faces commissioner Selig, and no amount of asterisks can solve it.